It’s that time again. Time to roll up my shirtsleeves, wipe the sweat from my brow and hit the pavement internet looking for work. My six years of agency work is almost done, and in another month, I’ll be flying solo. And broke. Possibly homeless. (Don’t tell my kids.)
Unless, of course, there is someone out there who would like to pay me a comfortable living just for being awesome. Anyone? I am awesome, I promise. Even when I’m sleeping. Sugar daddies welcome. Well, without the sugar… or the daddy bit. Just send me your money.
In addition to writing, editing, social media consulting and the other shameless credentials I’ve noted below, I can also walk your dog, buy your groceries, give you a massage (I don’t touch feet), build you a deck, teach you new cuss words, pour concrete, punch bees, mow your lawn, taste-test meals sent from your enemies, plant your garden, build you a lego village, change the oil in your car, sing you to sleep (although my fees for that one are particularly steep), alphabetize your canned goods, yell at your children (I’m highly skilled at this), blow up balloons, and internet stalk your ex’s new partner.
Please tell your friends, family, neighbours, co-workers and all the strangers you pass on the street. Together we can end this insantiy and I can get back to writing my novel with peace of mind. I’ve grown accustomed to my house and I would like to stay in it.
The success of any social media program is irrevocably tied to the initial expectations of the program. What did you think was going to happen?
Magazines were the original social networks. They filled a void for otherwise isolated individuals and the content transported them outside their community. Brands promoted their products through this early network with static advertising placement that shouted “LOOK AT ME. BUY ME. LOVE ME.”
With that in mind, let’s use Coca-Cola’s 70/20/10 content rule. 70% of your stories should be the low-risk, solid useful content your audience expects—appealing to all audiences. 20% of your stories should be higher-risk, solid useful content that is directed to specific segments of your audience—your loyal consumers. The last 10% of your stories are where you can set your hair on fire. It’s the content that reaches out to the edges, or comes at your idea in an entirely new way. Your audience might not be there yet or they might be right there with you. It’s the crazy, never-been-done-before-and-might-fail ideas. This is high-risk, but it has the potential to achieve the highest share rate and is also where your future 70-20% will come from.
A good example of a Brand leading their story through innovation is the grocery retail chain, Longo’s. They are telling you their brand story—quite literally. They are exercising their 10% and pioneering into new content configuration frontiers. They are bringing journalistic blogging together with traditional publishing techniques for a compelling story that is fun, engaging, and worth the attention of their audience.
Net policy or social media policy? I hear both of these terms being thrown about as if they were interchangeable. There is a difference. There should be a difference. The main distinction is the focus on what employees can do in the web world, rather than what they can’t. An internet policy typically outlines employee internet use during work hours—and consequently the monitoring of that use. A social media policy governs the individual interactions of your employees in the social sphere—as it relates to your brand—and can be much harder to monitor once an employee has clocked out and is operating in their own time.
their systems and processes and find something that might work for them. My instinctual response is to lie—and lie big. However, the short answer is that you have to figure it out for yourself. The long answer illustrates a chaos that is not for the faint of heart. I may be a bit old-school in my setup, but there is a generous helping of new-school. 
I defied nothing at all.
In this business, we writers watch each other very carefully. We keep an especially twitchy eye trained on those corporate staff writers with their pages of accolades. It’s not their fault. The collective ego of society convinces us that there is value in those accolades. They need it to have value. But the new generation is on to them. They’re bored with them. The slow-acceptance of these primitive thinking newspaper executives allows them to keep ramming their ‘glory days’ references up our wazoos. They tote by-lines noting decades of combined newspaper writing experience—like that means something now. It doesn’t. There is no edge there. It’s just old news.
Documentaries are gaining immense notoriety these days. Even my local video store has taken the time to negotiate documentary titles out of the genre muck and onto their own special rack. 
UberScribbler 